Comfort
by awesomesen
Summary: How Gippal lost his right eye. Not a romance, part one of two.


_When I'm feeling stressed, I enjoy taking it out on FFX-2 characters. But I've also wanted to write this story for a pretty long time. __This story uses lyrics from two kidneythieves songs - Creature and Dyskrasia. This is part one of two, the set up to be followed through with with angst or more violence or something._ _Point being, there's more to come._

* * *

**creature comfort, delicate—**

** wish i could lose the day we met**

* * *

By four AM the site was already bustling; work started early in the desert, of course, so as to avoid the brunt of the sun, but even so this was early. There was a reason, of course—a machina, recently excavated, the size of a small hut. One of Yevon's models, as they were called; the kind still deemed acceptable by the church. It was rare to find one in the desert. Rarer still to find one so large and so old; perhaps even predating the Zanarkand-Bevelle war, to judge by the parts.

There was no need to rush except that Al Bhed rushed everything—so by four, the site was already bustling. A open-sided tent had been erected, the sides could be dropped if the wind picked up and sand started flying. The pit—for the machina was tall and standing upright—was accessed by a ladder; scaffolding allowed work at different levels. The control area at the chest was swarmed over, but anything interesting looking was fair game. It would probably be dismantled, reverse engineered, eventually; today the goal was merely to figure out how old it was, what it did and how it worked.

The machina was easily four times as tall as Gippal was, although in fairness at eleven he hadn't started growing yet. Pekya led him with a hand firmly on his shoulder to the command center at the machina's feet; it was downright cold here, underground and in the night, even damp. "Got you a runner," he said, shoving Gippal forward. Already fifty, Pekya's blond hair had whitened and skin leathered; he was an impressive, scarred figure, testament to a life of working in the sand. He was Gippal's mother's cousin and the closest living relative he possessed.

"'On a site like this," the foreman replied, "we could use at least two." Runners did just as their name implied; odd chores for whoever was in shouting distance. Fetching tools and water, mostly, but it was one step below apprenticeship and you weren't qualified for that until you were twelve.

"He'll work hard enough for two," Pekya replied, which might have been a threat wrapped in a promise; either way Gippal nodded frantically, blinking and trying to look eager. He was. He had Ran a few times before now, but never on a site so large and important. There had to be at least thirty adults here, all hard at work.

The foreman shrugged as she nodded. "You're on the head," she said to Pekya, handing him a paper with a rough blueprint of the machina drawn on. Blueprinting was an important job for an Al Bhed; Gippal's cousin Nhadala was studying it, already seventeen, but he thought it was stupid—engineer, that was better, much more exciting—and when he drew himself out of that thought (of screws and wires and sparks), he was alone, Pekya long gone, the foreman looking down at him with half a smile, as if waiting for him to start paying attention on his own.

She was old, but not as old as Pekya—in Gippal's loose estimate. Probably around his mother's age if she wasn't dead; short hair and short for a grownup. She looked nice. "Ready? Have you ever done this before?"

"Couple times!" he replied, trying to sound cool and not squeaky. "Last month I, I did one—um, it was part of an old bunker but the computer systems still worked pretty good."

She smiled at him. "Well, I'm glad you know the drill." Pekya was harsh but nice, and Nhadala was nice but she was bossy, too, because she was older and didn't have anyone else to boss around, and the foreman's smile warmed Gippal's heart (not that he knew it, really; it was more like the sand around the machina's feet seemed less cold suddenly, or something; at most he thought, hey, wow, a nice lady for a change—Nhadala being his only experience).

And that was that.

* * *

**creature comfort, delicate**

* * *

All Running was pretty much the same, no matter what the site. Gippal fetched water, tools, sent messages and delivered people where they were needed. One man asked him to reach into a crevice—an access port, really, he hadn't had any tools handy and Gippal had been standing right there. Small handed still, he had been able to reach into the port and tell the man what was inside (nothing, just smooth metal).

That was pretty much the high point of the morning; by the time the sun was up and the eastern wall of the tent lowered, Gippal had fetched water and screwdrivers more times than he could count and was, frankly, getting a bit bored of it all. It was always like this—it sounded so cool, such a great idea, this time for _sure _he'd be allowed to work on the machina personally... but it never happened, and by the time the day started getting hot, Gippal was anxious to get home. This was how it always went, of course—Pekya glared down at him from his place on the scaffolding, by the machina's head, as if he could read his mind. Or tell by the way Gippal was sitting, crouched in a corner to avoid being spotted, that he was getting bored.

He thought about going back to work, but after a minute Pekya looked away; Gippal figured he was safe. In the packed earth beneath his feet he spotted a sand beetle, which Gippal entertained himself with for a few minutes, poking it, letting it scurry, and poking it again; then it scurried under the machina, and Gippal decided to go after it.

It was human shaped - the machina - human shaped in the way that attack machina usually were; long armed, with squat, square heads, thick torsos and short legs. It was clear now that it was mostly uncovered that this machina had a missing leg, and leant to the right because of it—supports would be needed soon, or else the thing would topple over, crushing anything below it under several tons of metal and stone. He chased the bug around the machina's ankle, still half buried, but the bug was a digger and was soon gone. Gippal, bored, scraped some of the sand away from the ankle — then more as something caught his eye.

An access panel.

Soon he had cleared the sand away completely and began tracing around the edges of the panel looking for a way to open it. It was small and probably not the machina's main controls—those were usually in the head and torso—but it was interesting, and more importantly, no one else had noticed it yet. Finally, Gippal had the chance to prove himself capable with machina! This was worth a promotion for sure!

A short investigation revealed a tiny groove beside the panel, the sort you opened by sticking it with something thin. He tried to fit his fingers in, to no avail; Gippal had no tools, so he improvised - biting the white of his thumbnail off, drying the spit off on his shirt, and sticking that in the slot. Nails were brittle but not very hard; however, after a few tries and jamming of the thing in the hole, Gippal got the catch to give enough that he could pry the panel open with force.

Feeling proud, he had a look. It was a opening a few inches deep, the far end of which held a cluster of thick wires. It was surprisingly clean of sand for the most part, and best of all, there was a switch set to "off" on the left wall. Gippal didn't hesitate: he pushed it.

The machina hummed to life — for a moment. It shook and hummed and creaked, before one of the wires in Gippal's panel suddenly snapped and sparked. The machina fell still again.

There was a hush in the excavation camp for a few seconds, then everyone began to talk excitedly at once. Pekya jumped down from the scaffolding and was at Gippal's side very quickly, taking the boy and pulling him up to his feet. "What did you do?" he asked grimly.

"What! Nothing!" he replied shrilly. "I was playing with a bug and I found the panel and there was a switch so I pressed it!" Gippal became aware about five words in that everyone was listening; feeling suddenly lame, he shrugged.

"Idiot!" Pekya snapped, letting go of Gippal's shoulder to cuff him on the ear — but lightly enough that he felt that he probably wasn't in too much trouble. "Never, _ever _do that!"

"Why not?" Gippal retorted, wriggling away from his uncle and glaring.

"You never know what might happen! Never turn on a machina that you haven't already studied," Pekya snapped, "and certainly never do it without telling everyone else! What if the machina hadn't stopped, eh? What if it had sprung to life, and we hadn't had warning?"

Gippal tried to look defiant, but couldn't manage it; that hadn't really occurred to him. The foreman stepped forward, looking serious but not angry. "Well," she said, "It's fine now. We've been looking for that panel — it connects the machina's internal energy," she added, for what Gippal thought was his benefit alone, "so thank you, Gippal, for finding it for us." She smiled, and he smiled back, feeling proud of himself again. "_But," _she added seriously, the smile gone, "you aren't supposed to be playing with the machina at all. You're untrained, and it's unsafe. Don't let me catch you doing it again. You have your own job here, you understand?" He nodded sullenly, feeling tricked by her praise.

The gathered Al Bhed began to get back to their work, and Pekya himself squatted down behind Gippal's panel — or just the panel, now — and called for tools. The foreman watched Gippal patiently until he turned around to go fetch them.

Not thirty minutes later, Gippal was dead.

* * *

**do you want to be?**

** do you want to be—**

* * *

The warning went out: They had fixed the wiring and were preparing to turn the machina on again. Stand clear of the feet and arms. Gippal was in the middle of getting water for two of the men working on the torso; he put the canteens down to turn and look. Pekya flipped the switch in Gippal's panel and stepped back as the machina hummed to life.

The cleared area was larger now, so that the machina stood—with supports now—in the center of a rectangular pit about three times as long as it. The pit was ten feet deep, covered by a tent and accessed by three ladders. It was a small area full of excited Al Bhed engineers.

The machina hummed to life, twitched its arms and hands, head and remaining leg, turned its torso, looking like it was stretching. It creaked and made a low, vibrating sound that hummed in Gippal's teeth. Then, still humming, it stood still. There was a moment where all the Al Bhed assembled seemed to hold and then release a nervous breath; then the workers began to swarm forward again.

The machina swung one heavy arm.

Time stopped.

* * *

**do you want to be on what i feel?**

* * *

The three men in the path of the arm were thrown backwards; less than thrown, knocked, crashed, hurled, two of them smashing into the sand walls of the pit and Gippal could see teeth fly from one of the men's mouth as he hit, teeth and blood, which he began to cough and throw up more of until his coveralls were bright, sick red. And the third man had been hit higher and he didn't have a head anymore, just a pulpy lump, bleeding and shattered, mushed and gray and red; still alive for a moment, a few seconds, he turned and seemed to look over at Gippal

(_you)_

and one eye, one eye was still in what was left of his neck and head and skull, the other gone or mashed into the shards of bone and brain, and that eye bulged and stared and Gippal jumped backwards and fell into the water trough ass first and

_(you—)_

—panic broke out. Al Bhed began fighting for the ladders; the ones who weren't frozen in fear, and it didn't matter because the machina was moving now, hopping forward and turning its torso in the center of the pit and swinging its heavy-stone hands. One of the ladders was knocked over and no one seemed to have the presence of mind to pick it back up; Gippal saw everything, all of it at once. He'd climbed out of the water trough without noticing or realizing, dripping wet and otherwise frozen.

The machina wrenched free of the scaffolding and support beams and stepped on a woman and there was a crunch, he was sure he heard one, a _crunch _even over the hum and the screaming and the panic as the woman was crushed and when the machina stepped-hopped off her there was her stuck to its foot, blood and guts and something gray and long and dripping blood trailing from the part of her stuck to the machina and the part of her—not flat, not like in cartoons, but pulpy and mashed like a bug, bones and an arm sticking up and blood and guts trailing and weird colors and the machina tilted strangely, its one good foot in the air, leaned against the wall of the pit and put the dirty squashed-gunk foot back in the sand, still leaning.

People — escaped people — were shooting at it now and Gippal saw a bullet go — hit the machina and bounce and hit a man in the chest and another in the head, another explosion of brain and gut and blood—that was when he peed himself, that was when he couldn't help it, he hadn't needed to pee but he did anyway, hot and itchy but he was soaked anyway so no one would be able to tell he hoped and

(_you found the panel you did you)_

then he saw uncle Pekya, holding a makeshift spear made of scaffoding-metal in both hands

(_did this you did)_

get smashed between both the machina's hands at once. And he burst like a wet bag and his blood flew and hit both walls, both walls, blood and guts and intestines stuck to both the machina's hands like cat's cradle and bone splintered and teeth flew and shards of uncle Pekya's ribs and hands and knees and head flew like knifes and brain gunk like oatmeal dripped and oozed and the machina pulled its hands apart again and the mush gunk, the stuff that had been Pekya, fell to the sand.

The pit smelt like piss and blood.

Out of range of the machina, barely, Gippal remained frozen in place, watching the massacre. Most of the people still in the pit had forgotten the ladders existed, out of fear or because they were dead.

He threw up. And again. And again.

_(you found the switch you did this you found the switch.)_

* * *

**—what i feel**

* * *

He didn't die. It was the foreman who saved his life.

The machina tried to step forward again, limited by a missing leg, and toppled instead, crushed four or three more Al Bhed under it, maybe alive or maybe already dead and twitched there, too heavy and unable to get up although it tried, twitching and flailing and one of the Al Bhed who had climbed out at the start of the accident grabbed one of the ladders from the top and moved it out of the range of the machina's twitching, dropped it near Gippal.

"Kid!" he yelled; "Climb on up! Come on!" —But Gippal couldn't move. Standing in his sick and wet with pee and water and drops of blood and maybe even brains, who knows, and he couldn't move even though he wanted to; just kept staring at the twitching machina and the pulpy corpses all around.

"Oh, fuck," someone said; a man, maybe a woman, he didn't know and barely heard, his ears ringing even though it was finally almost quiet. Then the foreman was climbing down the ladder herself carefully and she walked right over to him not caring about the piss and blood and sick she was stepping in and stepped in front of him between him and the machina and smiled and crouched over a little and took Gippal by the shoulders. And he saw the other survivors in the pit, three of them, picking their way to and up the ladder.

"Come on," she said. "Come on, darling, let's go, okay?" He nodded a little or twitched or shook; she smiled and hugged him gently, getting sick on her shirt, too, and he burst into tears on her shoulder; crying and dripping snot.

Then

Then she

Then the machina twitched like it had been doing helplessly except not anymore was it helpless; it had a missile arm, a blast hand, and had finally seen Gippal and had finally targeted Gippal and had locked on and

(_thanks for the help here's a present)_

and it shot too low in a bad position so that it drove through the sand and was slowed and weakened but it was close range and heavy and fast and there were tools by the water trough, sitting on a table and all that was crushed too when the missile hit them and—first Gippal went backwards and then the foreman was on top of him but not completely, and when he turned his head so that his gasping mouth wouldn't get blood and brain and bone in it and he turned his head and

the metal table with the metal tools were crushed and shards were flying and it didn't make sense that this was happening so slowly, that he could see and notice all of this even while falling backwards, that he could see a piece of jagged metal slowly arch its way towards him

—and then he couldn't see anymore.

But he could feel the foreman, her arms around him, her knees mixed up with his, her blood mixing with his pee and sick and squashed and torn open and hot, so hot, burning heat and gunpowder and his shirt had rode up and on his bare stomach he felt her guts slip from the pulp of her body and drip down onto his skin, hot and soft and slimy; her hands and fingers dug into his back clawing into his back and freezing that way; she breathed into his neck until she stopped breathing and it was hot and it was wet and she was pressed against him because of the heavy metal missile pressed against her

—like a pillow shield, he thought; like using a pillow to keep the book Nhadala threw at me from hurting because pillows are soft and Nhadala is mad and the foreman's legs limp and mixed with his and her skin split and pressed and dripping blood onto his and her head at his neck and her hair itching in his face

(_i can't see)_

and he heard screaming and gunshots and passed out to the smell of smoke and gunpowder and guts.

* * *

**hit fast forward the edge is shorter**

** scream and make sure you keep it quiet**

* * *

When he woke up, he could hear a fan turning slow, so Gippal knew he was inside. He didn't open his eyes because he was afraid of what he might or might not see, so he continued to lie still, feeling at peace. The sheets — for he was in a bed — were rough and stiff, and the blanket so tightly tucked in that he didn't know if he could move, were he to try.

He didn't. He counted each _fwoosh_ of the fan, each slow rotation, and was asleep by the time he reached sixty.

* * *

**creature comfort—**

* * *

When he woke up again, there was someone moving him around, lifting his arms and hands, moving his head and feeling his neck. They didn't hesitate or try to be comforting, and Gippal decided he was in a hospital. He didn't open his eyes but he moved a little on his own so that the person would know he was awake.

"You've been through quite an ordeal," the doctor said; a man with a slow voice. To match the slow fan, Gippal thought sleepily.

"Yeah," he said.

"Can you open your eyes for me?" the doctor asked. Because he had been ordered, Gippal did, but only his left eye opened; his right seemed heavy, like it was glued shut. The room was dark, until he realized that he just couldn't see. He struggled and thrashed and the doctor had to pin him down, speaking slowly all the while. "Your right eye is beyond repair. We removed it surgically a few days ago, while you were still unconscious." He said it like this was of no real importance. "Your left eye is hurt, but it should recover fully." Gippal wished he had never opened his eyes at all; with them closed, it wasn't important if they worked or not. The doctor prodded at his eyes and told Gippal to try and look in different directions with his left; he shone a bright light at it, and Gippal could see it in a fingernail-sliver along the bottom of his sight.

"What about my right eye?" he said, panicked.

"For now, we've sealed your eye shut. We can give you a glass eye—"

"I don't want one!" Gippal tried to sit up, but a searing pain in his side caused him to fall backwards. He let his eyes—eye—close again.

"You have stitches. Please be careful." The doctor had stopped touching and examining Gippal; he wished he could see what was going on. Or just see. He tried not to cry. "You'll be fine," the doctor continued in a comforting tone. "It'll just take a little time."

"Where's my family?" Gippal asked, then remembered uncle Pekya and felt dizzy and faint and out of breath.

The doctor helped him catch his breath, keep from hyperventilating. "Your cousin has been in several times to see you. Right now it's nearly midnight, so she's gone home."

"Where are we gonna live? Uncle Pekya is—and what happened to the machina? And what—"

"Please, try and calm down," the doctor said sternly. "I'm going to give you some juice with sleeping medicine now. Will you drink it?"

"Will you tell me in the morning?" Gippal asked instead, taking the paper cup when his hand was guided to it.

"I won't," the doctor said. "But someone will. Don't worry. Right now, you just need to relax."

* * *

**creature comfort, delicate**

* * *

"—Are ya awake?"

By morning, the sliver of sight in his left eye was permanent, and Gippal could see most things in a slightly dim blur. His hospital room was small and white, with a table—wooden and empty—for flowers. His guest was tall and burly and bald, with a hoarse, rough voice that Gippal recognized from hundreds of announcements in Home.

Cid.

Everyone knew Cid, but Gippal didn't know that the Al Bhed leader knew him personally; he was nervous, anxious, and fidgeted as he nodded. Cid gave him a few minutes to slowly ease himself into a sitting position, then sat down in the chair by the bed.

They were silent; Gippal didn't know what to say and was afraid of interrupting the man, and Cid seemed to be frowning—although Gippal wasn't able to see clearly enough yet to be sure. "Twenty-four," Cid said finally. "That's the number of people that died in the accident earlier this week."

Gippal had thought it was more, thought it was hundreds and thousands of people, but he didn't want to think about it—he nodded jerkily.

"Two people were injured badly. Yerself and an older guy. He didn't make it past surgery." Maybe Cid was frowning, maybe not, but his voice was perfectly calm. "Another ten people escaped unharmed. Worst accident in years. We haven't had this many people die at one time since the last Sin attack."

Gippal settled for nodding; he didn't know where Cid was going with any of this, but it was making him feel sick to his stomach. He didn't want to be sick in front of the Al Bhed leader, so he concentrated on breathing through his nose.

"My wife," Cid said after a long silence, his voice now sharp, "was one of those killed."

_The foreman_, he thought suddenly, his mind clicking the two things together; Gippal knew he was right without any hesitation, but being right didn't cause him any pride or happiness: he felt sicker than ever. _Your wife who died all over me_, he thought, _covered in her blood and my sick and her hair itched_. At eleven, he knew enough about sex to know it existed, that grown-ups liked it and it involved a guy and a girl lying on top of one another. _She lay on top of me and died, your wife_—

Breathing fast now, Gippal must have been pale, because Cid got up and returned with a large bowl which he put in Gippal's lap. Grateful, he promptly threw up in it, and then again; then he gagged and dry heaved a few times, shaking and wishing Cid would say something. Something nice. Something else.

He didn't. "I'm sorry!" Gippal said finally, his voice high from panic. "She told me to move but I couldn't move and then it was too late and I didn't mean to, I really didn't, sir, I'm sorry!"

"I ain't blaming ya," Cid said, taking the bowl away and putting it on the empty flower table. Gippal, eyes itching and watering, wished he could see well enough to see what Cid's expression was. "I just wanted to meet ya." Gippal's nose was running, a side effect of trying not to cry, and he wiped the snot on his sleeve. "I heard yer uncle was one of the guys killed."

Gippal nodded. "He was my my mom's cousin actually but my parents are dead and so are Dala's." This explanation didn't make much sense in retrospect, but Cid didn't seem to care.

"I'll take care of ya and yer cousin," he said, standing once more from his chair. "Least I can do. Sorry ya got caught up in that accident, kid."

"I'm sorry about your wife," Gippal mumbled, wiping his nose again.

Cid nodded. "She died to save ya," he said. "Least I can do is make sure yer worth it." Leaving Gippal to think about that, Cid left.

* * *

**take the abuse and make it worse**

** creature comfort, delicate**

* * *

The next day, Gippal's sliver of sight had more than doubled and his doctor promised he was healing well and quickly, but he couldn't leave bed yet. Nhadala had come by with flowers and tears and had never been nicer to him, and he was starting to get his appetite back. Things were going to be okay, he had decided, even though his stomach felt hollow still, his throat small.

Then he had a visitor. A small-looking girl with pigtails threaded with chocobo feathers. "Hi," she said. "My name's Rikku. Nice to meet you. My dad—he said you—" She fidgeted and looked nervous. "My mom died."

He stared—and stared—and stared, as best he could with one eye half seeing and the other puckered shut. "Yeah," Gippal said. "Guess so."

She stared back. Fidgeted. "Saving you," Rikku added, needlessly.

"Yeah," Gippal said again. "Guess so."

* * *

**creature comfort, delicate—**

** wish i could lose the day we met**

* * *


End file.
